Anthologies featuring bestselling authors alongside rising stars. Short story collections from some of our beloved authors with Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver and Anita Desai among the better known
Anthologies & Short Stories
University of New Orleans Press Death by Pastrami
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£14.41
University of New Orleans Press The Hubris of an Empty Hand
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£16.11
University of New Orleans Press In Everything I See Your Hand
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£17.06
University of New Orleans Press Animal Truth and Other Stories
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£16.11
University of Iowa Press Pulp and Paper: 2011 John Simmons Short Fiction
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£13.25
University of Iowa Press Safe as Houses
Book SynopsisSafe as Houses, the debut story collection of Marie-Helene Bertino, proves that not all homes are shelters. The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In ""Free Ham,"" a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it. “Has my ham done anything wrong?” she asks, when the grocery store manager demands that she claim it.In ""Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph,"" a failed commercial writer moves into the basement of a convent and inadvertently discovers the secrets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. A girl, hoping to talk her brother out of enlisting in the army, brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner in the quiet, dreamy ""North Of."" In “The Idea of Marcel,” Emily, a conservative, elegant girl, has dinner with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, Marcel. In a night filled with baffling coincidences, including Marcel having dinner with his idea of Emily, she wonders why we tend to be more in love with ideas than with reality. In and out of the rooms of these gritty, whimsical stories roam troubled, funny people struggling to reconcile their circumstances to some kind of American Ideal and failing, over and over. The stories of Safe as Houses are magical and original and help answer such universal and existential questions as: How far will we go to stay loyal to our friends? Can we love a man even though he is inches shorter than our ideal? Why doesn’t Bob Dylan ever have his own smokes? And are there patron saints for everything, even lost socks and bad movies?All homes are not shelters. But then again, some are. Welcome to the home of Marie-Helene Bertino.
£13.25
University of Iowa Press Of This New World
Book SynopsisAllegra Hyde’s debut story collection, Of This New World, offers a menagerie of utopias: real, imagined, and lost. Starting with the Garden of Eden and ending in a Mars colony, the stories wrestle with conflicts of idealism and practicality, communal ambition and individual kink. Stories jump between genres—from historical fiction to science fiction, realism to fabulism—but all ask those fundamental human questions: What do we do when we lose our utopia? What will we do to get it back?Over the course of twelve stories, Hyde writes with a mix of lyricism, humor, and masterful detail. A group of environmental missionaries seeks to start an ideal eco-society on an island in the Bahamas, only to unwittingly tyrannize the local inhabitants and disrupt the social ecosystem. The neglected daughter of a floundering hippie commune must adjust to conventional life with herungroovy grandmother. A wounded veteran gets lost in erotic fantasies of his twin brother’s life. Haunted by her years at a collegiate idyll, a young woman eulogizes a friendship. After indenturing his only son to the Shakers, an antebellum vegan turns to Louisa May Alcott’s famous family for help. And in the final story, a down and- out drug addict gets a second chance at life in a government sponsored space population program, only to be flummoxed by erectile dysfunction. An unmissable debut, the collection charts the worlds born in our dreams and bred in hope.
£13.25
University of Iowa Press Stories No One Hopes Are about Them
Book SynopsisAt once playfully dark and slyly hopeful, Stories No One Hopes Are about Them explores convergences of power, privilege, and place. Characters who are ni de aquí, ni de allá—neither from here nor there—straddle competing worlds, disrupt paradigms, and transition from objects of other people’s stories to active subjects and protagonists of their own. Narratives of humanity and environment entwine with nuanced themes of colonization, queerness, and evolution at the forefront. Big things happen in this collection. But it’s also a collection of small intimacies: misremembered names, chipped teeth, and private rituals; unexpected alliances and barely touched knees beneath uniform skirts; minutiae of the natural world; incidents that quietly, achingly, and delightfully transgress the familiar.Trade Review“Stories No One Hopes Are about Them is an absolutely brilliant collection, so of the moment formally and politically yet timeless in its pursuit of human contradiction. These stories move across geography, mode, and tone, linked not by common characters or shared locales but by the sly wit and stylistic virtuosity of their author. A. J. Bermudez’s debut left me in awe.”—Anthony Marra, judge, Iowa Short Fiction Award“In Bermudez’s captivating and mischievous debut collection, protagonists search for meaning and deal with other people’s entitlement. Bermudez eloquently and powerfully writes of objectification and exploitation. This is a must-read.”—starred review, Publishers Weekly“The haunting stories collected in A. J. Bermudez’s Stories No One Hopes Are about Them comment on qualities of the Anthropocene and center apathy’s hand in violence. Volleying between the beauty of final moments and the thrill of crimes, these stories are not to be ignored.”—Foreword Reviews“A. J. Bermudez’s dazzling debut is a riveting collection of stories filled with memorable characters whose acerbic wit in the face of an absurd world haunts and delights. Each incredible story contains a world in miniature brought to the page with maximum impact, revealing a fragile surface that nonetheless is too tempting not to be shattered. There is an exhilarating breadth of characters, events, and places in these stories, showcasing a promising new writer who mixes the daily and the outlandish in a vision that is often wrenching and always surprising.”—Michael Nye, author, All the Castles Burned“With Stories No One Hopes Are about Them, A. J. Bermudez explores what makes us us. Twenty brief tales poke at our assumptions of who we are and why we make our decisions. These are moments of living laid out over parties, plane tickets, rooms, and lives; they fold, unfold, and refold; paper airplanes cradling small insights. Pause in the frozen moments, breathe in the now of here and what comes next.”—Derek Beaulieu, director of literary arts, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity“In moments I almost hoped these wildly intelligent and wholly electric stories were about me. Was it recognition of those Bermuda Triangle-like moments when what we are running toward becomes what we are running from? Or pure admiration for the simultaneous swagger and patience of Bermudez’s turns of phrase? Maybe it’s the urge to be at the mercy of her formal range, from delightful lists to moments that gesture toward pure myth? It’s all of this, but mostly it’s how these heroes and fools still believe in metaphor as a site of human transformation, if not of our circumstances, then at least of our understanding of how we got from there to here.”—Jenny Browne, author, Fellow Travelers, State of Texas poet laureate ". . . sly and sharp-edged collection. . . . Bermudez deploys language with precision and panache (keep a dictionary handy) and is the kind of author whose work you want to devour."—The A. V. Club
£14.20
University of Iowa Press The Woods: Stories
Book SynopsisThe Woods explores the lives of people in a small Vermont college town and its surrounding areas—a place at the edge of the bucolic, where the land begins to shift into something untamed. In the tradition of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, these stories follow people who carry private griefs but search for contentment. As they try to make sense of their worlds, grappling with problems—worried about their careers, their marriages, their children, their ambitions—they also sift through the happiness they have, and often find deep solace in the landscape. What do we find in the woods? An uplifting of spirit or a quieting of sorrow. A sense of being haunted by the past. Sometimes rougher, more violent things: abandoned quarries and feral cats, black bears, brothers caught up in an escalating war, a ghost who wishes to pass on her despair, monsters who boom with hollow ecstatic laughter. But also songbirds: the hermit thrush and the winter wren. Rushing rivers glossy with froth. A nineteenth-century inn that’s somehow gotten by all these years. And far within, a vegetal twilight and constant dusk that feels outside of time. This remarkable debut illuminates the ways we all carry within ourselves aspects stark, beautiful, wild, and unknowable. Trade Review“In Janice Obuchowski’s stories, the woods surrounding a Vermont college town are as suffused with mystery and dread as any forest found in the Brothers Grimm. The characters adrift in these woods are viscerally alive and heartbreakingly real as they search for a route back to the world they knew. By situating the universal experience of bewilderment within one specifically observed woods, Obuchowski has crafted a genuine work of art.”—Anthony Marra, judge, John Simmons Short Fiction Award “The Woods is a smart, moving collection—descriptive, evocative—with rich and believable worlds for readers to immerse themselves in.”—Megan Mayhew Bergman, author, How Strange a Season “I was happy to be lost in the shadows, clearings, and tangled vines of these stories—each is generous, funny, and beautifully precise, and together they make something gorgeous. I am Janice Obuchowski’s great big fan.”—Ramona Ausubel, author, Awayland “Janice Obuchowski’s stories place us in a very particular world, the world of college town Vermont, where intellect rules but The Woods summon, her narrators like woodland sirens. We meet people at both ends of life—young academics and those looking back from retirement—as well as locals making sense of their changing communities, all of them lured to the liminal space of the woods. In beautiful, compelling, precise prose, Obuchowski observes the human ability to go on in the face of the unknown, the regretted, the unexpected, and, perhaps most important, the unchangeable. As with all the best fables, one thinks: don’t go into the woods. But of course you must.”—Lori Ostlund, author, After the Parade“Janice Obuchowski’s voice—deliberate, lucid, arrestingly authoritative—is a pleasure; with a careful eye and generous measured style she renders a Vermont landscape and its inhabitants. With its cast of recurring characters, and exquisite attention to place, this collection calls to mind Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge”—Amanda Coplin, author, The Orchardist“These are such richly inhabited storyworlds, tottering between the wild and the civilized, peeking into places made stunningly lucid with language but still mysterious in the way the natural world is mysterious. What a thrilling debut!”—Aimee Bender, author, The Butterfly Lampshade"Obuchowski’s lucid debut collection digs into the isolation and complexities of her characters’ inner worlds... evocative interior descriptions and subtle revelations about the characters’ relationships to place.”—Publishers Weekly“When you look closely enough at a place, you might begin noticing things that don’t quite mesh with your understanding of the world. Think most folk horror; think Twin Peaks. Janice Obuchowski’s new collection The Woods heads into a suburban Gothic space, with some of its stories populated by ghosts and strange creatures.”—Tor.com
£15.15
University of Iowa Press No Use Pretending
Book SynopsisThe characters in these stories have been forced into conditions of life that they find unbearable, and the stories chart their often tragically misguided attempts to relieve their suffering via connections with other people or through the pursuit of addictive attachments (to opiates in one story, to sleep in another). This collection encompasses diverse genres, from ecologically informed realism to a Kafkaesque fairy tale, from fabulist “weird fiction” to an episode from The Odyssey that becomes a meditation on what distinguishes human beings from animals. These stories invite the reader to reconsider moral and ideological certainties, to take a fresh look at such issues as fracking and drone warfare. In one story, a petroleum engineer discovers that one of his wastewater wells may be causing earthquakes, and in another the pilot of an Air Force drone seeks to reconcile his conflicting roles as protector and executioner, husband and soldier. The scientist and the serviceman are both presented with problems that have no easy or obvious solutions, situations that force them to confront the messy, compromising complexity of being human.Trade ReviewA story can contain multitudes, and an author too, as Thomas Dodson shows us over and over in this astonishingly varied collection. As at home in a bee yard as a Greek epic, he cannot but dazzle us with the enormity of his range, and yet he does not paint with broad strokes. Quite the contrary, he fills his stories with loving detail and quiet wisdom. No Use Pretending is a joy." - Gish Jen, judge, Iowa Short Fiction Award"No Use Pretending is a remarkable debut. I marveled at the range of emotions and voices—from beekeepers to drone pilots, an ancient Greek sailor to a hungry ghost—that Thomas Dodson is able to conjure in this terrific, capacious collection of short stories." - Jess Walter, author, The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories"Thomas Dodson is a writer wonderfully aware of the resources of fiction and the necessities of the world. His vividly imagined characters seldom act in their own best interests. They keep bees, fly drones, lose loved ones, and in general suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But Dodson never loses sight of their complicated humanity—he is too canny a writer for that—and of their desire for something larger. In the midst of darkness there are moments of light, grace, and accidental wisdom. No Use Pretending is an arresting and exhilarating debut." - Margot Livesey"Thomas Dodson’s inventive and beautifully crafted stories take us deep into the heart of the human dilemma: We dream—of an ideal world, an ideal way of living—we fall short, and then what? Dynamic, deeply visual, and with an extraordinary array of characters and settings, No Use Pretending immerses the reader in a captivating vision of hope, regret, and resilience. It leaves me meditating on some of its central questions: ‘What principles should we use to organize society? What is the right way to live?" - Tom Drury, author, Pacific
£16.10
Wings Press Where We Are Now: Short Stories
Book SynopsisA collection of stories that Carolyn Osborn has developed over two decades, Where We Are Now is about a single family, the Moores. Marianne is the main narrator of these stories about her mother's family. In the first tale, "The Greats," her relatives are so distant Marianne can only give brief glimpses of the eccentric Moores. "The Grands," an O. Henry Prize–winning story, first introduced readers to many of the characters who inhabit Where We Are Now. By knowing the Moores, we begin to know Marianne, who tries to understand them. Curious as she is, she must continually accept the mystery of reality. Aware of the need for family mythology, she orders her world as best she can with what she is given by reacting, reflecting, inventing, and enlarging on the fragments. Other narrators reveal omissions Marianne can never know. Marianne's life and the lives of the Moores have a definitively southern flavor; they mirror fading 19th-century morality, an acceptance of eccentricity, the habit of storytelling, a strong consciousness of place, and the influence as well as the particularity of family. These stories are an attempt to show the failures and triumphs of love, the necessity of forgiveness, and the usefulness of different sorts of families.Trade ReviewCarolyn Osborn's thoroughly admirable new collection, Where We Are Now, is all about those strangers we call family. Osborn's collection is wise, funny, and moving, the mature work of a skilled writer. The characters are vivid—Tennesseans, Texans, and New Mexicans, orphans and parents, aunts, and uncles, sisters and brothers. Some are rascals, others are tyrants, and all of them grow on you. Wherever you read Where We Are Now, you'll be transported to a front porch on a summer afternoon, where you're delighting in the company of an old friend who is telling you at last the secrets you've wanted to know." —Laura Furman, series editor, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and author, The Mother Who Stayed"[Carolyn Osborn] has earned a place as one of Texas's finest writers with prose that is precise and full of heart, and this book of Tennessee exemplifies that." —Austin American-Statesman"One of Texas's finest writers, Carolyn Osborn, is back with a collection of her award-winning stories. Osborn's stately lyricism, plain-spoken epiphanies, and hard-won truths are all on superb display. Fans of Alice Munro should have a look at this indispensable collection." —Sarah Bird, author, Above the East China Sea"[The] stories read like chapters of a novel and focus on generations within a family. The stories interweave themes, events, characters and even objects, such as a blue fence or wax fruit. Mysteries are solved, or at least revisited. Characters have interconnecting complications." —Dallas Morning News
£15.26
Europa Editions Marry Me
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£10.80
Europa Editions The Stories of Jane Gardam
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£16.20
Europa Editions The Cracks in Our Armor
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£12.34
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Mundo Cruel: Stories
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£8.54
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Natural Histories: Stories
Book SynopsisSiamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake, and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly. In a precise writing style that is both subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. Natural Histories is the winner of the 3rd Ribera del Duero International Award for Short Narratives, an important Spanish literature prize.
£15.16
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Natural Histories: Stories
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£8.54
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Writers: 13 Vignettes
Book SynopsisGreat American storyteller Barry Gifford paints portraits of famous writers caught in imaginary vulnerable moments in their lives.
£10.79
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Things To Do When You're Goth In The Country: And
Book SynopsisA short story collection about drugs, UFOs and the dykes and weirdos who live in America's contemporary underbelly.
£15.29
Seven Stories Press,U.S. The Cuban Club
Book SynopsisSixty-four linked tales of innocence, memory, and growing up, by American master Barry Gifford.
£17.09
Seven Stories Press,U.S. The Cuban Club
Book SynopsisSixty-four linked tales of innocence, memory, and growing up, by American master Barry Gifford.
£10.44
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Things To Do When You're Goth In The Country
Book SynopsisA short story collection about drugs, UFOs and the dykes and weirdos who live in America's contemporary underbelly.
£11.69
Seven Stories Press,U.S. The Involuntary Sojourner
Book SynopsisA delicate and profound debut collection of short stories.
£12.59
Amazon Publishing Sucker's Portfolio: A Collection of Previously
Book SynopsisAvailable for the first time, Sucker’s Portfolio showcases a collection of seven never before published works from Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Short, sardonic, and dark, these six brief fiction stories and one non-fiction piece are consummate Vonnegut with piercing satire and an eye for life’s obscene inanity. Also available for the first time is an unfinished science-fiction short story, included in the appendix. These stories trace trivial human lives and mundane desires, which is precisely where Vonnegut’s inimitable perspective as a humanist shines, illuminating his alternating hopeful and dismal outlook, although undoubtedly focusing on the latter. Here as in his greatest novels, Vonnegut’s writing takes us to the darkest corners of the human soul and with wit and humor, manages to remind us of our potential to be something greater.
£11.09
University of South Carolina Press The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth: And Other
Book SynopsisThe Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth was originally released in 1994 and was the first published book from acclaimed writer Ron Rash. This twentieth anniversary edition takes us back to where it all began with ten linked short stories, framed like a novel, introducing us to a trio of memorable narrators - Tracy, Randy, and Vincent - making their way against the hardscrabble backdrop of the North Carolina foothills. With a comedic touch that may surprise readers familiar only with Rash's later, darker fiction, these earnest tales reveal the hard lessons of good whiskey, bad marriages, weak foundations, familial legacies, questionable religious observances, and the dubious merits of possum breeding, as well as the hard-won reconciliations with self, others, and home that can only be garnered in good time. The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth shows us the promising beginnings of a master storyteller honing his craft and contributing from the start to the fine traditions of southern fiction and lore. This Southern Revivals edition includes a new introduction from the author and a contextualizing preface from series editor Robert H. Brinkmeyer, director of the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies.Trade ReviewA substantial contribution to recent southern fiction." - Georgia Review
£15.26
Skyhorse Publishing The Gold of the Sunbeams: And Other Stories
Book Synopsis“Tito forces us to reconsider the condition of the deeply autistic.”—Dr. Oliver Sacks, New York Times Bestselling AuthorDiagnosed as severely autistic at the age of three, Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, nearly nonverbal, was brought up by his loving mother Soma, who taught him to read English and challenged him to write his own stories.The initial result was The Mind Tree, published in 2003, which Tito wrote between the ages of eight and eleven. The Gold of the Sunbeams is an equally impressive, beautiful collection of stories, each prefaced by a charming note from Tito explaining how the story came into being. Above all, this is the work of a true poet.Tito gives voice to the life experiences he has had with autism and provides readers with explanations for his responses to the world at large. He writes in word murals; his use of language is vividly colorful and warm, like “sunbeams.”Tito and Soma are Ambassadors on a Goodwill mission of hope and education for people with autism and their families. Here, instead of books by "experts" who speculate about a condition they don't have, you can read the words and thoughts of someone who has autism.
£10.44
Skyhorse Publishing Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh
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£11.99
Skyhorse Publishing Marrying off Mother and Other Stories
Book Synopsis"All of these stories are true," states Gerald Durrell in the preface to this newest collection of his fiction, but he quickly amends, "To be strictly accurate, some are true, some have a kernel of truth and a shell of embroidery." Ranging from the equator to the southern coast of England, Marrying off Mother and Other Stories covers a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters. Durrell returns to his Corfu childhood and reintroduces the members of the Durrell clan familiar from My Family and Other Animals. He also shares his picnic with a fragrant sow and prize truffler named Esmeralda in the Perigord; charms an aging belle in Memphis; stays with an alcoholic hangman in Paraguay; delivers a pornographic parrot to a clergyman in London; and dines with a gambling nun in Monte Carlo. A world-famous conservationist and humorist, Gerald Durrell shares eight irresistible stories that beg to be retold over and over again. As you'll see in Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories, Durrell's wit is on-point and as said in the San Francisco Chronicle, "The old Durrell charm is still there."Trade Review"These stories are full of romps, archness, and old-fashioned silliness." - Boston Globe
£11.39
Rowman & Littlefield Behind the Curtain: Selected Fiction of
Book SynopsisIn the decade that followed his emigration to the United States in 1851, Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1862) produced a steady stream of contributions to American newspapers and magazines. As short story writer, essayist, poet, dramatist, reporter, reviewer, drama critic, and editor he won reputation as one of the ablest young writers in New York City, displaying what one contemporary termed an "extraordinary" talent. But soon after his early death from complications of a battle wound, the sense of wonder at O'Brien's prolific accomplishments began to dissipate. In 1881 his friend William Winter brought out The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien, a one-volume collection that spared him the oblivion that awaits even the ablest magazine writers. That book, with reprintings derived from it, has formed almost by itself the basis for O'Brien's lasting reputation. In the early decades of the twentieth century O'Brien continued to be admired as the most significant practitioner in the short story in the United States of the 1850s. However, since then the recognition of his achievement has focused on a few tales of the macabre and the supernatural. He is now remembered in two unrelated contexts: as a colorful member of the "Bohemian" circle that flourished in New York City in the years prior to the Civil War, and as author of such stories as "The Diamond Lens," "The Lost Room," and "What Was It? A Mystery." The present volume reintroduces the fiction of Fitz-James O'Brien to modern readers by presenting fourteen of his works, five here reprinted for the first time, that together suggest the development and range of his accomplishment as a short story writer. Additionally, editorial commentary on individual stories reveals O'Brien's attunement to the fashions, fads, interests, and concerns that manifested themselves in his adopted city and country. Though immersed in the details of his own era, O'Brien cherished a belief that some of his writings would live beyond it. The present collection offers evidence tTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Part 2 Behind the Curtain: Selected Fiction of Fitz-James O'Brien Chapter 3 1: Elegant Tom Dillar (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, May 1853) Chapter 4 2: Hard-Up (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, July 1854) Chapter 5 3: Baby Bloom (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1855) Chapter 6 4: The Bohemian (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, July 1855) Chapter 7 5: Duke Humphrey's Dinner (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, August 1855) Chapter 8 6: The Pot of Tulips (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1855) Chapter 9 7: The Dragon-Fang Possessed by the Conjuror Piou-Lu (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1856) Chapter 10 8: The Mezzo-Matti (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, November 1856) Chapter 11 9: Uncle and Nephew (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1857) Chapter 12 10: The Diamond Lens (Atlantic Monthly, January 1858) Chapter 13 11: The Lost Room (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, September 1858) Chapter 14 12: What Was It? A Mystery (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1859) Chapter 15 13: The Wondersmith (Atlantic Monthly, October 1859) Chapter 16 14: Mother of Pearl (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1860)
£94.50
Rowman & Littlefield Playful and Serious: Philip Roth as a Comic
Book SynopsisFew contemporary American writers have stirred the minds and emotions of their readers as Philip Roth has done. Even fewer writers have excelled in various forms of the comic as Roth has for over a half-century. Playful and Serious assembles a group of outstanding Roth scholars and critics who focus their attention on the different ways Roth brings his comic tendencies to bear on essentially serious topics. The term 'comic' is used in the broadest sense to include humor, irony, satire, comedy, black comedy, and their variations. As co-editor Ben Siegel points out, Roth's special humor often appears to grow 'more surrealistic and obsessive, as in each new fiction he tries not merely to surpass the daily news but to touch what is deeply private and dark in the modern psyche.' In the process, he targets 'his society's most deeply embedded pieties and hypocrisies, enthusiasms, and lunacies.' This collection takes account of the majority of Roth's works, beginning with some of his earliest stories and ending with several of his most recent novels. It also includes an account of several relatively neglected works, such as 'Novotny's Pain' and 'On the Air,' but the essays in this volume deal mainly with the major works of fiction.
£101.77
Stone Bridge Press Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu: Modern
Book SynopsisXu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales, his exotic spy fiction, and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today’s readers an unusual glimpse into China’s turbulent twentieth century. These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.Trade Review"An excellent and much needed contribution to the field of Chinese and comparative literary studies that provides reading pleasure as well as fertile ground for further literary research and discussion." —Birgit Linder, Chinese Literature Today"Bird Talk not only reintroduces an ingenious author to the forgetful readership of modern Chinese literature but also makes an insightful contribution to the study of Hong Kong literature and other cultural productions during the Cold War. Green’s introduction, translation, and commentary present Xu Xu’s works from the innovative lens of neo-romanticism, one of the least-visited topics in the study of modern Chinese fiction."—Chris Song, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture "This well-conceived volume tells us much about Xu Xu, the times in which he lived, and it is a delight to read." —The Journal of Chinese Humanities "In Xu Xu’s stories, the narrators can recall the time that’s gone, and through their sorrow find “luster and warmth”." —The Asian Review of Books "Mystical, other-worldly, and fascinating." —The Portland Book Review"Beautifully crafted with deep feeling and great skill, [Xu Xu's stories] shine with a brilliance that dazzles."—Yuan-tsung Chen, author of The Secret Listener: An Ingenue in Mao's Court "Written in a witty, light-hearted tone, the story highlights how Hong Kong was romanticised as a city of new beginnings and businesses – a place where diligence, hard work and integrity could pay off. This is where many like Xu Xu, sick with longing and trauma and facing a harsh new world, could begin to heal themselves." —South China Morning Post"This volume of Xu Xu’s fiction is not only a welcome and highly anticipated addition to the must read list of Chinese literature, but will also captivate many contemporary minds who, faced with this trying age, long for “metaphysical sanctuaries” and reversals between the fantastic and the real."—Pu Wang, Rocky Mountain Review"This outstanding anthology, with its informative, engaging, and well-argued introduction and afterword, can be at once a welcome source and textbook for scholars and students who are interested in twentieth-century Chinese literature and global literary modernity, and an enjoyable and pleasant book for all readers, who will certainly be deeply touched by the imaginative splendor and otherworldly sanctuaries that Xu Xu’s stories create."—Yanhong Zhu, China Review International "Unknown writers are only unknown to those who cannot read them. Windows open when a translator unlocks them. That has happened here. Green’s engaging translation of stories by novelist Xu Xu allows readers of English to understand—finally—why he is so popular and important in China and Hong Kong. The collection includes a wide, wonderful range of topics, times, geographies, and styles. These are stories that illuminate and captivate." —Howard Goldblatt, a Guggenheim Fellow, is an internationally renowned translator of Chinese fiction, including the novels of Mo Yan, the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature "With style, humor, warmth, and pathos, Xu Xu turned the mid-century Chinese experience of revolution, war, and displacement into compulsively readable pop modernist romances. In this volume of translations, Frederik Green brings this unique and imaginative modern voice and his world to vivid life for English readers for the first time." —Andrew F. Jones, Louis B. Agassiz Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley "Xu Xu was a writer poised between worlds, a chronicler of exile and diaspora, witness to the vibrant ferment of a British Hong Kong, and the phantoms that haunt what was once a Japanese Taiwan. Foreshadowing many a Chinese ghost story, and foreseeing many a cross-cultural romance, Xu’s stories were both snapshots of the past and uncannily visionary predictions of our present." —Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of China "One of the most widely read Chinese authors of the mid-20th century finally available in English translation. A delight for scholars and general readers." —Chris Wen-chao Li, D.Phil., Oxford University. Professor of Chinese Linguistics, San Francisco State University "Xu Xu’s fiction opens a window onto Shanghai’s roaring 1930s, China’s War of Resistance against Japan, and the post-war experience of Chinese exiles in Hong Kong. Highly recommended." —Jianye He, Librarian for Chinese Collections, University of California, Berkeley "An intriguing selection of short fiction by one of the great storytellers of modern China and postwar Hong Kong, elegantly translated and prefaced with an insightful and engaging introduction." —Jennifer Feeley, Ph.D, Yale University and translator of Xi Xi’s Not Written WordsTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Xu Xu’s Literary Journey through Twentieth-Century China A Note on the Translation 鬼戀Ghost Love 猶太的彗星The Jewish Comet 鳥語Bird Talk 百靈樹The All-Souls Tree 來高升路的一個女人When Ah Heung Came to Gousing Road A Chinese Romantic’s Journey through Time and Space: Xu Xu and Transnational Chinese Romanticism References
£13.49
Stone Bridge Press Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu: Modern
Book SynopsisXu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales, his exotic spy fiction, and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today’s readers an unusual glimpse into China’s turbulent twentieth century. These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.Trade Review"An excellent and much needed contribution to the field of Chinese and comparative literary studies that provides reading pleasure as well as fertile ground for further literary research and discussion." —Birgit Linder, Chinese Literature Today"Bird Talk not only reintroduces an ingenious author to the forgetful readership of modern Chinese literature but also makes an insightful contribution to the study of Hong Kong literature and other cultural productions during the Cold War. Green’s introduction, translation, and commentary present Xu Xu’s works from the innovative lens of neo-romanticism, one of the least-visited topics in the study of modern Chinese fiction."—Chris Song, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture "This well-conceived volume tells us much about Xu Xu, the times in which he lived, and it is a delight to read." —The Journal of Chinese Humanities "In Xu Xu’s stories, the narrators can recall the time that’s gone, and through their sorrow find “luster and warmth”." —The Asian Review of Books "Mystical, other-worldly, and fascinating." —The Portland Book Review"Beautifully crafted with deep feeling and great skill, [Xu Xu's stories] shine with a brilliance that dazzles."—Yuan-tsung Chen, author of The Secret Listener: An Ingenue in Mao's Court "Written in a witty, light-hearted tone, the story highlights how Hong Kong was romanticised as a city of new beginnings and businesses – a place where diligence, hard work and integrity could pay off. This is where many like Xu Xu, sick with longing and trauma and facing a harsh new world, could begin to heal themselves." —South China Morning Post"This volume of Xu Xu’s fiction is not only a welcome and highly anticipated addition to the must read list of Chinese literature, but will also captivate many contemporary minds who, faced with this trying age, long for “metaphysical sanctuaries” and reversals between the fantastic and the real."—Pu Wang, Rocky Mountain Review"This outstanding anthology, with its informative, engaging, and well-argued introduction and afterword, can be at once a welcome source and textbook for scholars and students who are interested in twentieth-century Chinese literature and global literary modernity, and an enjoyable and pleasant book for all readers, who will certainly be deeply touched by the imaginative splendor and otherworldly sanctuaries that Xu Xu’s stories create."—Yanhong Zhu, China Review International "Unknown writers are only unknown to those who cannot read them. Windows open when a translator unlocks them. That has happened here. Green’s engaging translation of stories by novelist Xu Xu allows readers of English to understand—finally—why he is so popular and important in China and Hong Kong. The collection includes a wide, wonderful range of topics, times, geographies, and styles. These are stories that illuminate and captivate." —Howard Goldblatt, a Guggenheim Fellow, is an internationally renowned translator of Chinese fiction, including the novels of Mo Yan, the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature "With style, humor, warmth, and pathos, Xu Xu turned the mid-century Chinese experience of revolution, war, and displacement into compulsively readable pop modernist romances. In this volume of translations, Frederik Green brings this unique and imaginative modern voice and his world to vivid life for English readers for the first time." —Andrew F. Jones, Louis B. Agassiz Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley "Xu Xu was a writer poised between worlds, a chronicler of exile and diaspora, witness to the vibrant ferment of a British Hong Kong, and the phantoms that haunt what was once a Japanese Taiwan. Foreshadowing many a Chinese ghost story, and foreseeing many a cross-cultural romance, Xu’s stories were both snapshots of the past and uncannily visionary predictions of our present." —Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of China "One of the most widely read Chinese authors of the mid-20th century finally available in English translation. A delight for scholars and general readers." —Chris Wen-chao Li, D.Phil., Oxford University. Professor of Chinese Linguistics, San Francisco State University "Xu Xu’s fiction opens a window onto Shanghai’s roaring 1930s, China’s War of Resistance against Japan, and the post-war experience of Chinese exiles in Hong Kong. Highly recommended." —Jianye He, Librarian for Chinese Collections, University of California, Berkeley "An intriguing selection of short fiction by one of the great storytellers of modern China and postwar Hong Kong, elegantly translated and prefaced with an insightful and engaging introduction." —Jennifer Feeley, Ph.D, Yale University and translator of Xi Xi’s Not Written WordsTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Xu Xu’s Literary Journey through Twentieth-Century China A Note on the Translation 鬼戀Ghost Love 猶太的彗星The Jewish Comet 鳥語Bird Talk 百靈樹The All-Souls Tree 來高升路的一個女人When Ah Heung Came to Gousing Road A Chinese Romantic’s Journey through Time and Space: Xu Xu and Transnational Chinese Romanticism References
£19.79
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Freeman's Animals
Book SynopsisOver a century ago, Rilke went to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he watched a pair of flamingos. A flock of other birds screeched by, and, as he describes in a poem, the great red-pink birds sauntered on, unphased, then 'stretched amazed and singly march into the imaginary.' This encounter - so strange, so typical of flamingos with their fabulous posture - is also still typical of how we interact with animals. Even as our actions threaten their very survival, they are still symbolic, captivating and captive, caught in a drama of our framing.This issue of Freeman's tells the story of that interaction, its costs, its tendernesses, the mythological flex of it. From lovers in a Chiara Barzini story, falling apart as a group of wild boars roams in their Roman neighbourhood, to the soppen emergency birth of a cow on a Wales farm, stunningly described by Cynan Jones, no one has the moral high ground here. Nor is this a piece of mourning. There's wonder, humour, rage and relief, too.Featuring pigeons, calves, stray dogs, mascots, stolen cats, and bears, to the captive, tortured animals who make up our food supply, powerfully described in Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk's essay, this wide-ranging issue of Freeman's will stimulate discussion and dreams alike.Trade ReviewThere's an illustrious new literary journal in town . . . [with] fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by new voices and literary heavyweights. * Vogue.com *A terrific anthology . . . Sure to become a classic in years to come. * San Francisco Chronicle *Freeman draws from a global cache of talent . . . An expansive reading experience. * Kirkus Reviews *Freeman's is fresh, provocative, engrossing. * bbc.co.uk *
£11.69
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Afterparties
Book SynopsisTHE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'So's distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and bighearted...unique and quintessential' Sunday Times'So's stories reimagine and reanimate the Central Valley, in the way that the polyglot stories in Bryan Washington's collection Lot reimagined Houston and Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous allowed us to see Hartford in a fresh light.' Dwight Garner, New York Times '[A] remarkable début collection' Hua Hsu, The New YorkerA Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick!Named a Best Book of Summer by: Wall Street Journal * Thrillist * Vogue * Lit Hub * Refinery29 * New York Observer * The Daily Beast * Time * BuzzFeed * Entertainment Weekly Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tender-hearted, balancing acerbic humour with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship and family.A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle's snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a 'safe space' app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick. And in the sweeping final story, a nine-year-old child learns that his mother survived a racist school shooter.With nuanced emotional precision, gritty humour and compassionate insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities, the stories in Afterparties deliver an explosive introduction to the work of Anthony Veasna So.Trade ReviewSo's distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and bighearted...unique and quintessential * Sunday Times *witty and sharply expressed...the reader senses that [So] had a vast amount of soul and spirit in his account, and that he'd only just begun to draw from it...So's stories reimagine and reanimate the Central Valley, in the way that the polyglot stories in Bryan Washington's collection Lot reimagined Houston and Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous allowed us to see Hartford in a fresh light. -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *[A] remarkable début collection...The young people in Afterparties spill forth with language. His stories are chatty and crass, as characters incessantly tease one another, make jokes,...talk back and talk trash -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker *A bright and fearless debut, full of heart, joy and unforgettable characters. -- Douglas StuartThe sheer richness and energy of So's narratives can't be overstated - his characters are full of love, and full of longing, and full of laughter, and full of the possibilities that life offers them and also the ones it hides. It's rare and magical and wild to find queer life, as it's actually lived, on the page - or on any pages - with all its multiplicities and creases and paradoxes and curves, and yet So lays it out for us, sparing nothing and giving everything. I was in awe through the entire collection -and you will be, too. Afterparties is an actual marvel. -- Bryan Washington, author of LOT and MEMORIALA wildly energetic, heartfelt, original debut by a young writer of exceptional promise. These stories, powered by So's skill with the telling detail, are like beams of wry, affectionate light, falling from different directions on a complicated, struggling, beloved American community. -- George SaundersAfterparties weaves through a Cambodian-American community in the shadow of genocide, following the children of refugees as they grapple with the complexities of masculinity, class and family. Anthony Veasna So explores the lives of these unforgettable characters with bracing humour and startling tenderness. A stunning collection from an exciting new voice. -- Brit Bennett, author of THE VANISHING HALFThe mind-frying hilarity of Anthony Veasna So's first book of fiction settles him as the genius of social satire our age needs now more than ever. Few writers can handle firm plot action and wrenching pathos in such elegant prose. This unforgettable new voice is at once poetic and laugh-out-loud funny. These characters kept talking to me long after I closed the book I'm destined to read again and cannot wait to teach. Anthony Veasna So is a shiny new star in literature's firmament and Afterparties his first classic. -- Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS' CLUBAnthony Veasna So is a terrific writer. These wild, complex and funny stories are brilliant in every way. They also speak in profound ways to this troubled American moment. One of the most exciting debuts of the past decade. -- Dana Spiotta, author of INNOCENTS AND OTHERSKaren Russell, Carmen Maria Machado, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - you can count on one hand the authors of this century whose debut short-story collections are as prodigious and career-making as Afterparties. This lovingly specific, history-haunted comedy of Cambodian-American manners should put Anthony Veasna So on smart readers' radar to stay. -- Jonathan Dee, author of THE PRIVILEGES
£14.99
Michigan State University Press Trigger Man: More Tales of the Motor City
Book SynopsisTrigger Man is a superb collection of stories capturing the gritty spirit of Detroit and the sometimes grim circumstances of the characters shaped by its industry and economics. Grounded on the bleak streets of the Motor City, these stories also explore the mythical “Up North,” the idealised country of many Detroit workers’ fantasy — an escape from the concrete and metal reality of their daily lives. Daniels’ characters are resilient and defiant, inhabiting a world that has often placed them on the margins of society, scouring a declining region for spiritual providence. Building on Daniels’ earlier collections of stories, Trigger Man brings vivid life to individuals struggling both to remain in and to flee the city that once sustained them.
£8.50
Michigan State University Press Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula
Book SynopsisHow does place impact prose? Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula explores that very question, drawing in the work of Upper Peninsula authors past and present to create a vibrant kaleidoscope of voices and experiences. Bame-wa-wa-ge-zhik-aquay, Janet Loxley Lewis, Lorine Niedecker, Catie Rosemurgy, and thirty-one other authors important to the region appear in this exceptional and diverse volume.In poetry (“Spring” by Beverly Matherne, “For Those Who Dream of Cranes” by Elinor Benedict, and “Skin on Skin” by Sally Brunk), short fiction (“North Country” by Roxane Gay, “For the Healing of All Women” by April Lindala, and “Winter Mines” by Sharon Dilworth), and novel excerpts (from Once on This Island by Gloria Whelan, South of Superior by Ellen Airgood, and Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson Rankin), the unique character of the U.P. materializes on the page. The book also shines a spotlight on powerful emerging voices such as Lisa Fay Coutley, Charmi Keranen, and Saara Myrene Raappana.The first of its kind, this is an anthology for all seasons, an homage to the rich literary heritage of the region.
£8.95
Michigan State University Press You as of Today My Homeland: Stories of War,
Book SynopsisThis volume comprises a translation of the first post-modernist historical Arabic novella, You as of Today, by the renowned Jordanian writer Tayseer al-Sboul, and his two short stories “Red Indian” and “The Rooster’s Cry”. “Red Indian” and “The Rooster’s Cry” complement You as of Today by providing, with striking transparency and precision, narratives that examine man’s journey to self-discovery through events that are culturally unique, transparent, and at times shocking.This volume is rich with tales of war, love, politics, censorship, and the search for self in a complex and conflicting Arab world at a critical time in its history. In a captivating style consistent with the nature of events narrated in the text, al-Sboul unveils the inner nature of social, political, and religious patterns of life in Arab society with an honesty and skill that renders You as of Today My Homeland a testimony of human experiences that transcend the boundaries of time and place.
£11.35
Michigan State University Press Obeah and Other Martinican Stories
Book SynopsisThis volume comprises French versions and English translations of seven short stories written by Marie-Magdeleine Carbet, Martinique’s most prolific woman writer. Four of these stories are previously unpublished, culled from documents obtained from Carbet’s niece.While analyses of the literature of the French Caribbean have tended to portray these people typically as suffering from pathologies of colonial oppression, the situations and reflections presented in these stories offer different perspectives on the lives and concerns of ordinary Martinicans and thus provide insight into some of the missing links of the sociocultural scene.This unique, multifaceted text fills an important pedagogical and scholarly need, and allows the reader to access the daily lives of French Caribbeans in a significantly authentic way.
£21.74
Michigan State University Press The Perp Walk
Book SynopsisIn The Perp Walk, his latest collection of linked stories, Daniels maps out the emotional capitals and potholes of coming of age in a blue-collar town in the Great Lakes State, though it could be any state where people work hard, play hard, and aren’t paid nearly enough for their efforts.Alternating flash fiction pieces with longer narratives, Daniels captures both the shooting stars and the constellations that build into earned insights and honest reflections. Sometimes we need both the long version of the short version and the short version of the long version, he suggests.Daniels invites his readers to settle on some truth in between the versions. Humor and heartbreak. Coming to terms, coming of age, or just plain aging. U-Haul trucks full of bad behavior and messy goodbyes. In Daniels’s work, the check is always in the mail but somehow never arrives, and honour is more than a certificate - it’s something we strive for, even while doing our various perp walks through life. Compromises are made, as they must be. Sometimes we get what we want for just a second or two, but for these characters, that has to be enough happiness to live on.
£19.76
The Story Plant A Dozen Truths: 12 Works of Fiction
Book SynopsisThe greatest truths are often revealed in fiction, as exemplified by this stunning anthology of stories that reveal the human condition in bracingly truthful ways. The eternal complexities of sibling relationships are revealed in four-time #1 bestselling author Steven Manchester's Lost." The hope and betrayal that so often underlies love declare themselves in Marcia Gloster's Losing Will." The reality behind a con man's illusions emerge in Craig Ham's contest-winning Tonic and Spirits." These are three of the dozen truths that will rise from these pages. Side by side with the work of national bestselling novelists like Mary Marcus and Earl Javorsky, A DOZEN TRUTHS features the three winners of the 2016 AuthorsFirst Short Story Contest, providing a bold mix of experienced storytelling and fresh new voices. As entertaining as it is engaging, A DOZEN TRUTHS promises twelve dramatic revelations - and as many powerful reading experiences. CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Eric Andersson Steven Manchester Carmen Siegers Marcia Gloster Craig Ham Lynn Voedisch Mary Marcus Christopher Slater KJ Steele Earl Javorsky Roger Bagg Robert HerzogTable of ContentsJoin by Eric Andersson Lost by Steven Manchester Ollie by Carmen Siegers Losing Will by Marcia Gloster Tonic and Spirits by Craig Ham Rune Lore by Lynn Voedisch Cut to the Cross by Mary Marcus Hide-and-Seek by Christopher Slater Two O'Clock Train by KJ Steele Howard and Pablo by Earl Javorsky ZEC by Roger Bagg Twenty-Seventh Street Robert Herzog
£13.29
The Story Plant Gallery of the Disappeared Men: Stories
£13.29
Amazon Publishing Speed Dreaming: Stories
Book SynopsisFrom a captivating new author come twelve piercing stories, in which young women negotiate friendship and marriage, art and commerce, and the possibility their lives might not work out as planned. After the house of the young couple in “A Cane, an Anchor” goes up in flames, they’re unsure of what they lost in the fire and what they’d lost long before it. “The Living” asks, how would you arrange your life if you had only six months left? In “Youse,” two teenage girls are the targets of an attempted kidnapping. A trio of linked stories—including the title track—follows Meg and Dax, a curator and a butcher who married impulsively, from their eerie honeymoon in rural Wales through Meg’s identity crisis when the museum where she works is destroyed, to early parenthood, when a coyote’s spectral presence at their child’s birthday party in a Brooklyn park suggests deeper threats.Trade Review“A bowler hat, a volleyball net, a pig tattoo: Nicole Haroutunian’s stories all have unexpected details that attract the eye and alert the mind. Those details glitter on the surface while something else entirely goes on underneath: dark tides of life, death, illness, and love, and people who are carried away by them during the course of otherwise normal lives.” —Ben Greenman, author of The Slippage and Mo Meta Blues “Nicole Haroutunian is a master of excavating what is ominous and therefore worthy of examination in our everyday lives—sleepover games, damaged bodies, dying cities, Brooklyn parrots, and the prosaic catastrophes of love. I loved reading these perfectly formed stories about thoughtful urbanites and their search for meaning in the mundane.” —Amy Shearn, author of The Mermaid of Brooklyn and How Far Is The Ocean from Here “Haroutunian’s breezy prose, and her characters’ humor and relatability—even when dealing with a recently-paralyzed boyfriend, a rocky new marriage, or a father’s recent death—makes reading this captivating collection a true joy.” —Bustle, Best Books of March “Speed Dreaming is a book spilling over with talent. How enticing and accurately drawn these stories are, with their bright touches and ominous edges, their smart young characters blocked by what they can’t see yet. A wonderful debut.” —Joan Silber, author of Fools and Ideas of Heaven “An unforgettable portrait of what it’s like to be a young woman in contemporary America...A beautiful, funny, and unflinching collection.” —Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of Brief Encounters With the Enemy “The characters who appear (and reappear) in Speed Dreaming are full of intelligence, wit, and empathy—as well as regret, fickleness, and occasional selfishness. In other words, they are wholly human. With unbelievable precision and grace, Nicole Haroutunian examines the exquisite, transcendent, and inexplicably eerie moments of her characters’ everyday lives and gives meaning to the smallest details of their worlds. Speed Dreaming is unforgettable.” —Nelly Reifler, author of Elect H. Mouse State Judge “Nicole Haroutunian’s stories are precise little gems. I know I’ll return to them again and again, since there’s something new and beautiful to find in them every time I open this collection.” —Lauren Grodstein, author of The Explanation for Everything “These passionate stories of women and their half disasters, half-rotten men, and fully open hearts are written so nimbly and with such energy and momentum and compassion that I found myself carrying the book from room to room, brushing my teeth and feeding the dog while reading, unwilling to put them down.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War “Fire, accidents, mysterious disease, and a coyote at a child’s birthday party are only some of the calamities that these protagonists must confront, along with the minor indignities and incongruities of romance and work. Haroutunian brings her complicated young women to life with utter literary confidence. A splendid debut.” —Melvin Jules Bukiet, author of Undertown and A Faker’s Dozen “These honest and perceptive stories contend with the painful contradictions of modern love; that it is precious as it is quotidian; inadequate as it is essential.” —Julie Sarkissian, author of Dear Lucy “Though the stories in Nicole Haroutunian’s debut collection are entirely fictional, things still get too real: friendships are pitted against marriages, a couple’s belongings disappear in a fire, an end date is placed on a life, and two young girls face an imminent kidnapping. Urgent and frantic, there’s plenty more speed within the pages of this book.” —Refinery29 “Haroutunian is smart about contemporary relationships, and her collection will certainly resonate with the Modern Love crowd. Her protagonists, all women, admit to melodrama, but they go one step further than the characters in Girls in that they question what’s behind their woe-is-me antics.” —The Paris Review Blog, Staff Pick
£8.21
Black Coat Press A Surfeit of Mirrors
£16.14
Black Coat Press Investigations of the Future
£14.99
Black Coat Press Isoline and the Serpent-Flower
£12.99
Black Coat Press The Adventures of Captain Cap
£14.99
Serenity Publishers, LLC The Mysterious Stranger & Other Stories (Large Print Edition)
£9.93
Serenity Publishers, LLC The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (Large Print Edition)
£16.70
